The Elite vs. the People
By William deB. Mills, PhD

Why did Tel Aviv rush to snatch the first excuse to break its own agreement with Hamas? On the surface, Israel got an excellent deal – Hamas stopped fighting even though Israel did not grant Palestine autonomy or agree to recognize Hamas as the legitimate government of Gaza, much less free the Palestinians from their colonial status. Israel has not even halted its steadily expansion into Palestinian territory. Hamas relinquished the main lever it has to persuade the rest of the world to pay attention to it even as Israel further consolidated its already overwhelmingly dominant position. So why did Tel Aviv leap at the opportunity to violate its own agreement?

Explanations of chronic international political disputes can be made on multiple levels, with each having a measure of truth. The level of explanation used in the media is frequently one of the least important of the several perspectives that together reveal reality. The Palestinian-Israeli dispute exemplifies problems that need to be seen in significant part as a struggle between elites and people rather than as a struggle between two different societies and, in particular, as a struggle between a “good” side and an “evil” side. The past two weeks’ events are a case in point.

On June 19, Hamas and Israel implemented an agreement halting Hamas rocket attacks in return for an end to Israel’s economic war against people of Gaza. [SOURCE] On June 24
Israel launched a military operation on a Nablus university campus, killing two Palestinians. [SOURCE]
On June 25, Palestinians (Islamic Jihad, not Hamas) fired rockets from Gaza to protest the Israeli attack.
Israel immediately took advantage of this to abrogate its part of the agreement, reinstituting its economic warfare against the whole population of Gaza. [SOURCE]

Why? Why the rush to break an agreement with Hamas orchestrated by Israel’s ally Egypt and return to the morally repugnant collective punishment of the people of Gaza because a radical faction (Islamic Jihad) responded to an egregious case of Israeli incitement that clearly violated the spirit of the new ceasefire? Does Tel Aviv not understand that this only promotes the unity of Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the whole population of Gaza--if not all of Palestine? Why would Tel Aviv not take advantage of this opportunity to split Islamic Jihad from Hamas?

Indeed, Hamas is practically inviting such an attempt by insisting that it intends to continue observing the ceasefire in the face of Israeli abrogation of its side of the bargain even as it refuses to “police” Islamic Jihad. After all, if Hamas, which claims to be the legal government of Gaza, will not police the Gaza population, then who else can do it…but Israel?

There may well be many answers to the question of why Tel Aviv was in such a hurry to violate its brand new agreement with Hamas, including a mental block on the part of Israeli politicians who simply cannot imagine any form of useful cooperation with their “implacable” Hamas opponent. But one level on which these events must be viewed for complete understanding is that of the competing interests of the elite and the people.

The Israeli garrison state receives almost limitless military and economic aid from the U.S., enabling it to stride the world stage as a mini-superpower and maintain its governing elite in power. Without the endless flow of free offensive weapons, Israel would have to learn to compromise with its neighbors to develop a joint security strategy. Without the endless flow of economic aid, Israel would be forced to cooperate economically with its neighbors and live within its means. Without being able to wave the bloody flag of fear, the political elite that now controls Israel would, in Israel’s vibrantly open system, be faced with overwhelming challenges from outspoken Israeli intellectuals who believe Israel can be a good neighbor and oppose the steady encroachment of the garrison state on Israeli democracy.  Both the garrison state and the current Israeli governing elite that manages it stand on a foundation of fear. Neither would be possible without the occasional Palestinian cross-border military strike to keep both the Israeli and American populations on edge.

A ceasefire would do even more damage to the Israeli elite than that – it would allow the world to take a breath and actually look at the situation, at which point all would see that Hamas is actually doing a relatively professional job (by regional standards) of local governance despite being the victim of full-time Israeli economic warfare and intermittent Israeli military warfare. For the world to realize this would embarrass a lot of elites – not just Israeli, but also the Egyptians, whose indifference to the plight of the people of Gaza has been so clear in recent months.

Beyond this, a ceasefire would greatly inconvenience Washington, which finds the unsinkable Israeli aircraft carrier a very nice base from which to impose its will on the Mideast. Note I am not claiming the highly counterproductive “unsinkable Israeli aircraft carrier” actually is an efficient way to dominate the Mideast; just that Washington, afraid of less “realist” approaches to power projection (e.g., setting an example, finding a win-win solution), perceives traditional military force projection over the Mideast from an Israel armed to the teeth with attack aircraft, missiles, submarines, and nuclear weapons as too great a convenience to give up.

In short, elites in every direction view a compromise solution to the Israeli-Hamas stand-off with consternation despite the urgent need for peace on the part of both the Palestinian and the Israeli people. Yes, the dispute is inconvenient and occasionally dangerous for a few Israelis living near the Gaza border. Yes, the dispute requires the oppression and torture by economic warfare of the whole population of Gaza. Yes, the dispute provides grist for every real radical (e.g., al Qua’ida types; the extremists in the part-radical, part-local government movement, Hezbollah; Islamic Jihad) and every opportunistic politician (e.g., Ahmadinejad) in the region. Yes, it amounts to an Israeli-run terrorist factory. And, yes, it lays the groundwork for a far more dismal long-term future for Israel, Palestine, and everyone else in the region, not to mention the rest of the world. Nevertheless, for the elites, the Israeli-Hamas standoff offers a simply irresistible array of goodies.

The phenomenon of an international political dispute becoming chronic in part because it benefits elites despite the harm that it does to populations on both sides is much more widespread than just the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In fact, it underlies the whole global clash between the West and Islam. Inflammatory headlines, irresponsible rhetoric, and mutual misunderstanding may make the intensification of the Western-Islamic confrontation appear inevitable. But these superficial characteristics conceal a more basic reason for the confrontation: the benefits that elites on both sides derive from the confrontation. In truth, the basic problem is less a matter of irreconcilable differences than a matter of how the two sides are defined.